Spl Lecture on "Management Consulting"

BIM students had a privilege of interacting with Mr. Jayaraman, a B. Tech from IIT Madras and MBA from Wharton, working with the Boston Consulting Group, Boston for the past five years.

Mr. Jayaraman spoke to the students on “Introduction to Management Consulting”. He started off with the history of consulting explaining how initially Banks were providing Consulting services but this practice of combining Financing & Consulting functions under the same roof was soon called into question. Though Frederick Taylor is supposed to have pioneered consulting it was Arthur D. Little the world's first management consulting firm and today is one of the world's leading management consulting firms, working closely with Fortune 500 firms across the globe. McKinsey started its operation in 1920’s as a strategy consulting firm, BCG, known for having a more analytic approach to strategy formulation, was started in the 60’s. Many consulting firms were later formed by the former employees of leading consultancy firms.

The Big Four is a term used to indicate the main powerhouses of consulting, PWC, Deloitte, KPMG and Ernst & Young. They all began as auditing firms before leveraging their expertise and knowledge to succeed in the field of Management consulting.

The functions of Consultancy firms can be broadly divided into Strategy, Process & Implementation. Any project is carried out through these phases. Mr. Jayaraman gave an overview of the functions involved in these phases. He also spoke about the career prospects in Consulting.

In India, McKinsey started its operation in 1970’s to become the first firm into Management Consulting, Boston Consulting Group is present in the country from 1985. Recently various Indian software firms like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, etc have forayed into the implementation phase; they are seen as potential competitors to global majors like Accenture and IBM in the near future.

During the second session, the students were given a real life consulting case & Mr. Jayaraman explained how to approach the problem in a systematic manner. The case was handled in an interestingly and innovative method employing the various management concepts and bringing out the solution from the students in a phased manner.